Just below the ring road as it crosses adel/meanwood beck is the remains of Scotland Mill. Built 1785 as a Woolen Mill it was leased in 1787 by John Marshall of Rawdon to house a Flax Mill to process Flax using a new patented spinning machine (a patent by Kendrew and Patterson based on Arkwrights iron frame) into linen.

Flax is a plant with blue flowers much like rape which has the yellow flowers -so next time you see a field of blue, you know what it is!! Flax makes linen, and the seed is linseed which makes the oil of that name. I thank you wikipedia!!

Marshall only lasted at the mill four years before he moved to Holbeck with his engineer Matthew Murray whose skills had much improved the machinery at the mill and who would go on to create steam engines and leave behind water power, which as we have seen in the Holbeck thread was not so prevalent in Leeds thanks to Murrays early steam power.

Jim's Cockersdale and Pudsey Beck Mills are of course similar in their position out in the country and power to Scotland mill, but what fascinates about Scotland Mill is the extent of the ruins and the sense of the ghost of Murray in the leafy valley.

At the top end the Mill pond and Dam are pretty much complete, with some smart stonework on the western side where the take off for the "mill goit" or "Mill race" stands clearly out. The height of the dam is interesting as the water was released not back into the beck but higher up on the valley hillside where the goit ran and mostly still runs today as a disctinctive 'U' shape channel cut along the hillside.

200 yards down along the race is a stone structure of two walls lining a channel running through and off the goit. At first I thought this was to just carry a side stream down to adel back - a pointless excersise when it could just drain straight into the Goit. I stood and wondered for some time and had no idea - anyone?? Jim??

The goit runs on along the valley hillside behind all the foundations and remaining walling of the mill cottages and the mill itself before stoppng at a stone structure still there above the south end of the mill - clearly shown on the Tithe Map. Here the water would turn and run down a wooden leat built high into the air so the water was delivered from above the wheel for maximum power.

This was a big wheel and the large stones still set on each other rising from the foundations may have been the bearers for the wheel axle, and may have carried the mechanism for transmitting the turning of the wheel into the drive belts for the machinery.

Just to the side of this is a drop into the ground below stone lined and peculiary arched in brick - nicely throwing me off my conclusion this was the wheel pit - maybe just the stairs down into the wheel pit, but interpreting water power remains isn't quite my forte!

But as the Tithe map shows the long Mill (drawn in Cole's book on the boundaries of cookridge and adel - not sure if this was accurate) had a wide end section creating an L shape and this clearly houses the waterwheel, the rest rows of Linen spinning frames.

For any industrial archeologist or historian it's a nice little jaunt and a big window to the past in a variety of ways.............

Hi Parksider. It's fifty years since I was last in that area, and have no memories of the watercourse details, so can only conjecture.

Is what you enquire of a situation where a secondary waterway crosses another without actual contact? If so two possibilities occur.

Firstly artificial watercourses were usually carried over ground not belonging to the user, and he would purchase rights or more often arrange a "wayleave", an arrangement to pass over that route which would be bought or rented with some legal agreement. Sometimes this would include rights to use the water supply, but often these were negotiated separately. If a small steam crossed the line of the diverted path, it could be less bother just to bridge over or under it rather than to get involved in further rights issues.

The second possibility is involved with water purity. We have noted before on Secret Leeds that most of the industry alongside this waterway was tanneries, leather works, and dye-works. All of these need large quantities of water for processing in addition to that needed for waterwheel operation, and that process water needed certain properties for best results. If a side stream contained impurities etc that were less favourable it would pay the next mill or works downstream to bypass that side stream across its watersupply.

I've now become very unsure as to where Scotland Mill was. Going downstream of Adel Beck on the Alwoodley side you cross a footbridge over the beck a little before that runs under the Ring Road. On the Adel side very close to the bridge there are some structure remains which I thought were those of Scotland Mill. They include what seems like an underground structure that I've only ever had a cursory glance into but I assume is blocked off. Are they the site of Scotland Mill or not, as they do not seem to be where Scotland Mill is on the map?

PS. In the Leeds Guide 2010 website in a description of the Meanwood Valley Trail it mentions "Remnants of the Scotland Mill Dam can also be found and what remains of Scotland Mill (foundations of buildings and the retting pits). The mill was originally built in 1785 for processing woollen cloth and later a massive water-wheel was built to harness the power of Adel Beck. The mill ran as a flax spinning and dressing mill until the 1850s but was burned down in 1906. The seven Scotland Mill cottages were occupied until much later in the 20th Century.

Also in the area, traces of a bricked potato store can be seen and for a short time, another flax mill, built in 1838, stood in the area, but it suffered when the Eccup reservoir was built, reducing the flow of King Lane Beck. The Mill was abandoned and Verity’s Tea House came into existence to cater for the thousands of visitors who walked to the woods after getting the tram to Far Headingley". Does anyone know where the intriguing "bricked potato store" was?